Nokia to get initial $65M payout from RIM for patent use

Although the stock market as a whole is down due to America’s ongoing blowhard budget bickering, we think investors have yet another good reason to buy Nokia (which is down today 3%). RIM will reportedly make an initial payment of $65 million to Nokia for their WLAN patent settlement from a few weeks back.

The settlement came after Nokia brought a complaint against RIM in U.S., United Kingdom and Canada claiming RIM was in violation of WLAN patents. The case went to arbitration and was found to be in favor of Nokia, resulting in an undisclosed settlement. Now information of the initial lump sum came forward via RIM's 6-K filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in addition “ongoing payments” for the right to use Nokia’s tech will also be provided.

Say what you will about Nokia but the company does have one of the strongest patent portfolios around and since money is tight right now, they are seeking to collect where they can. While $65 million won’t save the company, that’s not a bad “bonus” to add to the books at the end of the year.

While they have $2.9B as a highlight, that includes all of their treasury bills, bonds, notes, certificates, etc. Their actuall cash/cash equivilents on hand is $1.9B. Also, they owe over $3B in current debt, so $65M is still a big hit if they can't make the revenue to cover their debts. If BB10 isn't a hit then they are dead in the water. As it stands now, they are worth more dead than alive.

That comment sounds like you are suggesting Microsoft would bail out Nokia, not likely at all. A takeover maybe. RIM may not have someone breastfeeding them like Nokia but has patents and 80 million subscribers so i'm pretty sure that someone would be interested..

That last statement makes no sense. Nokia's patent portfolio has been estimated to be worth their whole value at the moment and they are dominant force on patents in this industry (and in tech only intel and Microsoft have largeer patent portfolios) and have been the top 3 R&D spender for 12 years in Europe with 4 billion euros yearly.
I think in this USA focused forum people forget that Nokia was once Europeas largest company and was the Apple of tech from 2000 till 2008. RIM has always been small beans globally.
Also Nokia naturally has way more phone buyers than RIM being second largest manufacturer.

Could be but Nokia will definitely go first. Nokia is just another OEM with the fate in the hands of consumers wheras RIM still has a big footprint in business and will likely ship quite a lot of the new hardware even if it isn't up to par in all aspects with Android and iOS devices.

I dunno, they (RIM) shipped 7 million phones in a quarter. They might have to scale back the company, but their revenue numbers and subscriber numbers are still good. A lot hinges on how well BB10 is received.
I know people who won't move from BB cos of BBM, and many businesses won't move off BES either.
Nokia have a harder time, way less cash. Smartphones are struggling, but long term they need to make smartphones work.
They still shift over 70 million dumb phones per quarter.
So if Nokia just ditched Smartphones they would make profit :)
I wouldn't count either of them out just yet.

I dunno, because BB is a dead platform, going the way of Palm. Because RIM is worth more dead than alive. Because BB10 has already failed and isn't even released yet. RIM is past the point of surivival. You BB fans keep holding onto the dream they will make a comeback..face it, the BB glory days are gone.

At least we had glory days (and still will), you guys have a decent OS with NO features that would make a person buy a WP over an android or iphone. BB10 isnt even out yet and its obviouse from what we've seen that it's already supperior to WP8... face it, WP wont even last long enough to have glory days.

I have nothing against WP, but to compared to BB10, feature wise, is insaine. My friend has a WP7, and I have messed with it quite a few times. I'v played with WP8 and read up about it many times as well so to say that I have not read up is just dumb. I fWP8 is so great than why do carriers have to subsidize them so greatly? BB10 has better and more useful features than WP8, IOS, and possibly even android... We have Flow, hub, a great keybored, BBM, while you have that dumb kids corner thing.

I have to agree with this. I've been a BlackBerry user for 4 years with my previous phone being a BlackBerry Bold 9900. I sold it to buy my Lumia 810 and I am regretting it greatly. WP8 looks beautiful on the outside but has no features on the inside. The only reason I left BB is because of the lack of quality apps. Otherwise my old Bold smokes WP8 in everything. WP8 lacks basic features. I cant even put a 2 hour reminder in my calendar since the options skip from 1 hour to 18 hours. Completely inexcusable. No customizable sounds for apps, no separate volume controls for different apps, live tiles don't work, skype doesn't work, facebook app completely sucks and the list goes on an on. Oh and the Nokia cameras are complete garbage. If my old Bold had an app selection I wouldn't have left it for anything. BlackBerry is still the king when it comes to getting shit done. WP8 does look nice but that's about it.

Notifications don't push to the live tiles. Especially in the Facebook app and kik messenger. When I get a kik message the toast appears but if you miss the toast you're screwed. Facebook app is slower than a turtle and the tile notifications are unreliable. Plus I can't edit comments and cant see mutual friends.

Their not subsidizing them so greatly, Nokia is telling them just as proportionally expensive. About $400-$450 is the subsidy.

BTW, does RIM still expect carriers to pay an extra fee to them like they used to with old Blackberry's? Why would carriers put their weight behind a series of phones that are less profitable than their other options? Businesses are dropping BIS in favor of Exchange and BYOD. Blackberry is going to have to change their revenue streams if they hope to make money the way they used to.

People in North America seem to forget that Nokia is a global country, and is really popular in many other countries. Symbian, Nokia's older smartphone O/S has more international marketshare than BlackBerry. The world does not stop outside of the U.S. border. RIM has very little global presence.

Nokia hasn't been in the black, profitable, for going on five years now. For a firm such as theirs, that's unsustainable.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that Nokia as a whole looks a lot different in twelve months' time than they do. Over the next few months they'll either disband divisions and sell them off, including smartphones; they'll sell the company whole to a willing buyer; or the least likely, they'll go tits up bankrupt.
My money is on a break up and sell off, piece by piece, which btw, seems to have already begun over the last year.

Haven't made a profit for 5 years? Where did you get that rubbish from?
From memory they made a profit first quarter last year, the issue wasn't that they were making losses, the real issue that their profits were dropping fast.
Its the same problem with RIM, they have been posting profits so far, but the issue there is their market share is collapsing and their profits have been falling. Nokia took one route of dropping their OS and going with Microsoft, we can see how that works out (and the first year at least was painful with the changes).
But what would have happened if Nokia had stuck with Meego? Well we can see more or less what would have happened by seeing how BB10 fares. My bet is not too well, as WP7/8 is a good product (maybe BB10 will be too), but its required a heck of a lot of marketting to get it known and some momentum behind it in a market that is already established.
Is RIM going to be able to globally launch BB10 with that sort of marketting push that Nokia+Microsoft have managed for Windows Phone? As whatever you think of them, Nokia and Microsoft have definitely made sure Windows Phone is known (and the 920 is definitely in my mind the most advanced handset out there too, RIM I guess cannot compete there on technical merit either - so they have to go for other angles to attract buyers).

Nokia hasn't been in the black, profitable, for going on five years now. For a firm such as theirs, that's unsustainable.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that Nokia as a whole looks a lot different in twelve months' time than they do. Over the next few months they'll either disband divisions and sell them off, including smartphones; they'll sell the company whole to a willing buyer; or the least likely, they'll go tits up bankrupt.
My money is on a break up and sell off, piece by piece, which btw, seems to have already begun over the last year.

"Nokia hasn't been in the black, profitable, for going on five years now. "
2010 they still made a profit of 2 billion euros. That was the last of about 20 consecutive profitable years. Q1 2011 they announced their partnership with MS.

Everyone keeps making fun of RIM. I, for one, still view them as a threat to Windows Phone and people might be underestimating BB10.
Of course I am hoping the Windows Phone prevails and improves in the standings, but I would not be surprised at all if BB10 is competitive. Hopefully MSFT will add significant Enterprise level functionality to the OS soon.

One thing to note is that the name Blackberry is more widely known than Windows Phone, so when the general media reports a new Blackberry is out, people WILL be curious about it. When Microsoft makes Windows Phone announcements, it barely resonates with general media.

Or they'll be reminded of the horrible experience of their old BB's and won't want to know anything about it. The name Blackberry may hold the new system back. I do view Blackberry10 as a threat but Microsoft has to play the long game and outlast them. RIM doesn't have the backing that Nokia has.

Why cant things be settle this way with other Tech Companies ? Accept the complaint take it to arbitration and BOOM!! No judges , No Jury's and saves millions in legal cost. Seems Nokia is more focused on innovating and producing some great products. pay attention Snapple.. ....

Nokia won't need saving by Microsoft. They are making sure that they have plenty of cash to survive. The finance folks seem to be doing an outstanding job at preserving cash; not sure however this is affecting the company internally. I expect Q4 to show that things are getting brighter at Nokia.
RIM on the other hand have just started their downward slide, much later than Nokia. RIM is a much smaller company and they will need less success to turn them around. BB10 needs to take off much faster than WP7 did. I still think the problem with RIM is they are trying to go alone, it's a bigger risk with a bigger payoff.

At the time Microsoft "saved" them Nokia had a market cap of $42 billion compared to the $14 billion now. They were making over a billion dollars in profit per Q and Symbian phones were the best selling phones in the world. Sure they were threathened as the king of the hill, but they were not nearly as in bad shape as they are with WP and MS.Smartphone sales the quarter before Microsoft "saved" Nokia:
Nokia 28.3%
Apple 16.2%
RIM 14.2%
Samsung 10.5%
Thats mighty fine for a dead platform.

Nokia has 2 adventage that RIM does not have , first one is that Nokia brand means quality especially in some developement contrys like China that is one of the biggest cellphone markets in the planet 2) Nokia is bigger and has the help of Microsoft that is one of the biggest software company out there . So is not going to be easy for RIM .... maybe BB10 is good but we dont know if it will be that good.....

I went to BlackBerry from several Nokia phones 2 years ago and I want to see both succeed. I had also been waiting for Microsoft to produce somethig credible in mobile. I upgraded this laptop to Win8 and there are a lot of things that I like and I also like the Nokia Lumia 820 especially. I'm sticking with BlackBerry though, BB10 looks like it is a great os with solid features, I also think that it is a potential game changer.
I'm very much in the A.B.A. camp, thats Anybody But Apple.